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Definition of Motif
A motif is an element or idea that recurs throughout a work of literature. Motifs, which are often collections of related symbols, help develop the central themes of a book... read full definition
A motif is an element or idea that recurs throughout a work of literature. Motifs, which are often collections of related symbols, help develop the... read full definition
A motif is an element or idea that recurs throughout a work of literature. Motifs, which are often collections of... read full definition
Motifs
Explanation and Analysis—Billiards:
Billiards play an important role, both as a game that characters actually play on stage and as a more general preoccupation—especially for Gayef. Apparently addicted to billiards, he repeatedly describes fantasy billiard shots in his lines when he wants to rein himself in. Through the motif, Chekhov comments on the ineptitude of the aristocratic class.
Early in the play, it becomes clear that Gayef is eccentric and talkative. When he first appears on stage, he moves his body as though he were playing billiards. Moreover, when he gets ahead of himself and other characters tell him to stop talking, his method of exerting self-control is to outline imaginary billiard shots.
In the first act, Gayef apostrophizes a chair, making the other characters present feel awkward. When Madame Ranevsky tells him that he hasn't "changed at all," he says with an embarrassed tone "Off the white in the corner, chip the red in the middle pocket!" Similar situations occur frequently. At the end of the first act, Anya and Barbara reprimand their uncle for talking too much. In response, he utters the rather incoherent line "I'm coming; I'm coming. Now go to bed. Off two cushions in the middle pocket! I start another life!" In the sentences before and after his fantasy billiard shot, he seems to be talking to himself, almost coaching himself.
Gayef continues to employ this tactic of self-censorship throughout the play. In the second act, when he starts getting restless during the picnic, he blurts "Red in the middle!" while talking about something else, perhaps to keep himself from going off on a heartfelt tangent. In this part, Lopakhin is trying to get Madame Ranevsky and Gayef to agree to his villa plan. As the atmosphere becomes increasingly tense and Lopakhin continues to demand an answer, Gayef relies on his billiards game to remain calm: "Off the cushion on the corner; double into the middle pocket..." Eventually, the other characters catch onto Gayef's tic and adopt it as a signal. Rather than directly telling Gayef to be quiet, Trophimof suggests at one point that he'd "better double the red into the middle pocket."
At the end of the play, shortly before the characters walk off stage, Gayef asks for permission to express his heavy feelings about leaving the house. His nieces deny his plea, and he sadly says "Double the red in the middle pocket. I'll hold my tongue." This moment demonstrates the pitiful nature of Gayef's eccentric billiard outbursts. Throughout the play, the characters around him have attempted to stifle his self-expression. He may be overzealous, and most of all offer a comical presence, but it is also sad that his family and friends have no interest in engaging with his thoughts and feelings. In fact, one of the few things the characters seem to agree on is their disinclination to hear his unfiltered musings. In the first act, Barbara says "You talk too much, uncle." And in the second act, Madame Ranevsky reprimands him for his excess: "Why do you drink so much, Leoníd? Why do you eat so much? Why do you talk so much?"
The billiards motif indicates that the characters have a negative view of talking in the play. This can be summed up by Yasha’s comment in the third act: “What’s the use of talking? You can see for yourself this is a barbarous country; the people have no morals; and the boredom!” The characters are especially uninterested in the words of the older aristocrats, whose worldview seems to have become irrelevant.
Related Themes:
Act 1
Explanation and Analysis—Seasons and Weather:
Over the course of The Cherry Orchard, characters repeatedly comment on the climate. As a motif, the unexpected temperatures and weather that come with the various seasons mirror the conflict between the characters' expectations and experiences of reality.
Although the first act takes place in May, Chekhov makes it clear that it is quite cold. He first emphasizes this in the play's opening stage directions.
It is already May, the cherry trees are in blossom, but it is cold in the garden and there is a morning frost.
Even an audience that is watching, rather than reading, the play, receives several hints about the discrepancy between the season and the weather. First of all, the windows are closed. Moreover, the characters mention the frost and surprisingly cold temperature several times in the dialogue. When Ephikhodof appears on stage, he complains about the climate:
EPHIKHODOF. There’s a frost this morning, three degrees, and the cherry trees all in blossom. I can’t say I think much of our climate.
Barbara also brings the audience's attention to the weather, when she laments that her "hands are simply frozen." The physical discomfort evoked by her and other characters' comments contributes to the audience's impression of their frailty. Moreover, the unseasonal frost, which has the potential to stunt the year's cherries, suggests that external conditions are not on the family's side.
Later in the first act, the sun has risen and the weather is more as one would expect during May. Opening a window, Barbara calls out that "it isn't cold now." Addressing her mother, she comments on the lovely trees, the sweet air, and the bird song. This can be taken as a positive signal—perhaps the family will have reason to hope as the play progresses. This is how Madame Ranevsky sees it: "Oh, my cherry orchard! After the dark and stormy autumn and the frosts of winter you are young again and full of happiness; the angels of heaven have not abandoned you."
However, even as the frost disappears, the orchard remains white. The white blossoms on the trees bring Madame Ranevsky and Gayef back into their childhood. Madame Ranevsky even imagines that she sees their mother walking through the orchard in a white frock. This makes her laugh with joy, but creates an uneasy atmosphere as the other characters worry that she's hallucinating. While she may admire the beauty of the "white masses of blossom and the blue sky above," there is something cold and bleak to these colors. After all, the view of the orchard has made her invoke a ghost.
In the fourth act, which takes place in October, the weather motif again becomes important. In contrast with the beginning of the play, when it was unseasonably cold, it is unseasonably warm. This time Lopakhin brings the audience's attention to the weather: "Here we are in October, but it’s as calm and sunny as summer. Good building weather." Later in the act, he returns to the topic of the weather—perhaps because he doesn't know what else to talk about as he ousts the family from their home.
LOPAKHIN. At this time last year snow was falling already, if you remember; but now it’s fine and sunny. Still, it’s cold for all that. Three degrees of frost.
An attentive audience member might notice that the temperature is the exact same as at the start of the first act. Unseasonal temperatures frame the play: Madame Ranevsky arrives in unexpected cold and leaves in unexpected warmth. Her unpreparedness for the changing world seems to have accelerated the changes in her life.
Related Themes:
Act 2
Explanation and Analysis—Past vs. Future:
Throughout the play, much of the dialogue revolves around the past and the future. While characters often describe the future longingly with a positive connotation, they often describe the future avoidantly with a negative connotation. The motif becomes a kind of tug of war, as some characters prefer to reminisce while other characters are ready to receive the future with open arms.
In the first act, Madame Ranevsky and Gayef discuss the past with tones of nostalgia. To a certain degree, this is only natural, as Madame Ranevsky is back in her childhood home for the first time in six years. Nevertheless, as the stage directions indicate her kissing a cupboard and caressing a table, her delight gradually becomes absurd. Gayef mirrors her reverence for inanimate objects they grew up with when he suggests that they celebrate the jubilee of the cupboard, which was made 100 years ago: "It’s only an inanimate thing, but for all that it’s a historic cupboard."
Their attachment to these rather meaningless traces of the past becomes pathetic as their unwillingness to talk about the present and future grows apparent. Rather aloof to Madame Ranevsky's emotional response to being home, the pragmatic Lopakhin repeatedly tries to get her and her brother to talk about the impending sale of the cherry orchard. Their contrasting approaches to time are represented by the stage directions: while Madame Ranevsky and Gayef look outside and touch objects from the past, Lopakhin looks at his watch.
In the following acts, Lopakhin loses his patience. While he wants to talk about the August auction and the possibility of building villas on the estate, their mindsets remain stuck in an earlier time. A portion of dialogue in the second act gives a sense of his exasperation.
MADAME RANEVSKY. Villas and villa residents, oh, please, ... it’s so vulgar!
GAYEF. I quite agree with you.
LOPAKHIN. I shall either cry, or scream, or faint. I can’t stand it! You’ll be the death of me.
As usual, Madame Ranevsky and Gayef are stuck in the past. Rather than adopting Lopakhin's urgency, they're primarily concerned with the social repercussions of his plans. In the world they grew up in, building and leasing villas on one's land would be considered vulgar. Even if this plan is a response to their present-day reality, their view of the situation is entirely limited by outdated social conventions. They would rather rely on borrowing money from a rich aunt than follow through with Lopakhin's plan—because this is how aristocrats of an earlier time would deal with their financial woes. In frustration, Lopakhin calls Gayef "an old woman."
Other characters have their own relationships to the past. Trophimof, for example, is less concerned with his own personal past and more concerned with Russia's collective past. At the end of the second act, he tells Anya that the cherry orchard reminds him of all the suffering that took place on the estate before the emancipation of the serfs. In his view, it isn't possible to live in the present before "we" have redeemed the past. Firs also has a unique perspective. A very old man, he believes Russia was better before the emancipation.
In the end, letting go of the house and the cherry orchard becomes a way for the family to move into the future. As the characters reveal their plans in the fourth act, it is clear that their emotional, material, and physical hold on the past was keeping them from developing as characters and moving on.
Related Themes:
Act 4
Explanation and Analysis—Seasons and Weather:
Over the course of The Cherry Orchard, characters repeatedly comment on the climate. As a motif, the unexpected temperatures and weather that come with the various seasons mirror the conflict between the characters' expectations and experiences of reality.
Although the first act takes place in May, Chekhov makes it clear that it is quite cold. He first emphasizes this in the play's opening stage directions.
It is already May, the cherry trees are in blossom, but it is cold in the garden and there is a morning frost.
Even an audience that is watching, rather than reading, the play, receives several hints about the discrepancy between the season and the weather. First of all, the windows are closed. Moreover, the characters mention the frost and surprisingly cold temperature several times in the dialogue. When Ephikhodof appears on stage, he complains about the climate:
EPHIKHODOF. There’s a frost this morning, three degrees, and the cherry trees all in blossom. I can’t say I think much of our climate.
Barbara also brings the audience's attention to the weather, when she laments that her "hands are simply frozen." The physical discomfort evoked by her and other characters' comments contributes to the audience's impression of their frailty. Moreover, the unseasonal frost, which has the potential to stunt the year's cherries, suggests that external conditions are not on the family's side.
Later in the first act, the sun has risen and the weather is more as one would expect during May. Opening a window, Barbara calls out that "it isn't cold now." Addressing her mother, she comments on the lovely trees, the sweet air, and the bird song. This can be taken as a positive signal—perhaps the family will have reason to hope as the play progresses. This is how Madame Ranevsky sees it: "Oh, my cherry orchard! After the dark and stormy autumn and the frosts of winter you are young again and full of happiness; the angels of heaven have not abandoned you."
However, even as the frost disappears, the orchard remains white. The white blossoms on the trees bring Madame Ranevsky and Gayef back into their childhood. Madame Ranevsky even imagines that she sees their mother walking through the orchard in a white frock. This makes her laugh with joy, but creates an uneasy atmosphere as the other characters worry that she's hallucinating. While she may admire the beauty of the "white masses of blossom and the blue sky above," there is something cold and bleak to these colors. After all, the view of the orchard has made her invoke a ghost.
In the fourth act, which takes place in October, the weather motif again becomes important. In contrast with the beginning of the play, when it was unseasonably cold, it is unseasonably warm. This time Lopakhin brings the audience's attention to the weather: "Here we are in October, but it’s as calm and sunny as summer. Good building weather." Later in the act, he returns to the topic of the weather—perhaps because he doesn't know what else to talk about as he ousts the family from their home.
LOPAKHIN. At this time last year snow was falling already, if you remember; but now it’s fine and sunny. Still, it’s cold for all that. Three degrees of frost.
An attentive audience member might notice that the temperature is the exact same as at the start of the first act. Unseasonal temperatures frame the play: Madame Ranevsky arrives in unexpected cold and leaves in unexpected warmth. Her unpreparedness for the changing world seems to have accelerated the changes in her life.
Related Themes:
